


Wires and Waves Between Us

by marycontraire



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-02
Updated: 2011-08-02
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:44:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chaffin is honestly pretty fucking relieved when his phone rings in the middle of Christmas dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wires and Waves Between Us

Chaffin is honestly pretty fucking relieved when his phone rings in the middle of Christmas dinner. His family is in the middle of a raging, alcohol-fueled argument about his baby sister’s new jackass boyfriend, and, at this point, he’d be happy to talk to someone calling to tell him his car in Oceanside has been repo-ed. He’d be happy to talk to one of his superior officers giving him warning orders to go back to Iraq. He’d be happy to talk to fucking Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

But when he ducks out of the living room—where the noise level has reached a truly alarming decibel, and some of the younger kids have started throwing food—and says, “Chaffin,” the voice on the other end of the line does not belong to any of these possible callers. 

“Feliz Navidad, motherfucker,” barks Gabriel Garza through the tinny cellular connection. 

“Chaffin grins so suddenly and so widely that the muscles in his face actually object. “You know I don’t speak Mexican, you dumb spick,” he answers. 

“Mexicans speak Spanish, fucknuts,” Garza replies breezily. “It’s a beautiful fucking language. A language of poetry.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Chaffin. “I leave you alone for one goddamn week and you start reading fucking poetry. Did you stick a gay pride sticker on your car, too?”

Somewhere behind Chaffin, his step-dad is trying to discipline one of his obnoxious young half-brothers for throwing a dinner roll at his mom. His sister is still railing in defense of her motorcycle-riding loser of a boyfriend, and his other sister’s baby has started wailing like an ambulance. 

Garza laughs into the phone. “Hey, man,” he says, “Your Christmas sounds like my Christmas, but in a different language.”

Chaffin snorts amusedly as he kicks open the screen door and wanders out onto the porch, which, in true hick fashion, is covered in kids’ toys and car parts. The Louisiana winter is mild and damp, but it’s cold enough that Chaffin shivers a little—he rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie around the same time he started combating his family’s ridiculousness by knocking back whiskey.

“My Christmas is a fucking hick nightmare,” Chaffin confesses. “I actually couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I think my sister is dating one of the goddamn Hell’s Angels. And my other sister is knocked up again. And my half-brothers are holy terrors. And everyone is drunk and swearing at each other.”

Garza laughs again. “I’m drunk, too, man. My grandma is flipping out at my sister because she’s dating some white boy. And I think my little cousin is in a gang. They’re all just shouting at each other in Spanish. I’m hiding out on the back porch with a bottle of wine, hoping no one else comes out to ask me if I have PTSD, or if my citizenship paperwork came through yet.”

“Shit, I forgot about that,” says Chaffin. “Did that get fixed in the end?” Garza’s parents snuck him over the border when he was a kid—when he joined up, he had legal residency, but that’s it. Chaffin would never say this aloud, but he personally doesn’t see why the U.S. government is so slow to give out passports to guys who got their asses shot at on the front lines in Iraq. The goddamn cholos are going to hop the fence either way—they might as well try and keep the ones who serve the country and shit.

“Yeah, man. LT fixed it for us. Me and Baptista both. I’m a fuckin’ American now.”

“Well, welcome to the goddamn promised land,” Chaffin offers. A blast of damp wind whips over the porch, knocking over one of his half-brothers’ bicycles. It looks like it’s going to rain again.

“Oh, shit,” says Garza. “Here comes my grandma. Fuck, fuck, I gotta run, man.”

“Yeah, good luck,” Chaffin says, but he is cut off by the dial tone when Garza hangs up. He slides his cell phone back into the pocket of his trousers, and stays out in the cold for another minute. The sounds of his family’s melodrama are muffled by the exterior wall behind him. He thinks about what Garza said—your Christmas sounds like my Christmas, but in a different language—and laughs quietly to himself.


End file.
